No Last Goodbye
by idle curiosity
Summary: Will is dead; Jack and the sea have combined to rip her from his side. She never got the chance to say her last goodbyes.


It's relatively quiet now. It's almost disconcerting, how little noise there is.

Before, there had been the endless shrieking of the wind and rain, and the roaring waters of the maelstrom. There had been the relentless pounding of cannons, the incessant clap of pistol fire, the clashing of blades and the screams and moans of men.

All of that is over, and the only sounds to be heard are the raised voices of Jack and Barbossa and the other pirates as they mill about, arguing over what to do.

Elizabeth takes no part in it. She stands instead at the rail of the _Black Pearl_, gripping it tightly in her hands, a tired, wet, bedraggled figure. She has moved silently away from the others to stare at the sea, at the spot where she thinks she'd last seen the _Flying Dutchman_.

But there is nothing there. The ghostly ship is gone, having sunk to the bottom of the ocean, taking her beloved Will with it.

She swallows against the thickness of her throat. His death was such a hard, brutal thing. And it was her place ... her _right_ ... to mitigate that hard, brutal death with her gentle, loving touch.

She is his wife, and there are things that, as his wife, she should have been able to do. Final, tender, cherishing things. There should have been a chance for her to cradle his body in her arms one last time, a chance for her to tell Will her whispered words of love and goodbye. There should have been a chance for her to brush her lips over his in one last kiss, a chance for her to bathe him with her tears.

There should have been one last chance for her to _care_ for him.

But the sea and Jack combined to rip her away from his side, as she struggled and fought, screaming that she wouldn't, couldn't ever leave him.

His is a watery grave, a part of some wide, anonymous expanse of ocean; his coffin is the ship of death itself. She'll never be able to find the spot again, she thinks, a frisson of desolation shivering through her.

There will be no place for her to go to when she finds that she aches with missing him and she needs to be as close to him as she can. There will be no plot of ground that she can ornament with flowers or trinkets, no stone that she can touch in love and reverence with her fingers.

It isn't right. It can never, ever be right.

Images flash through her mind, images of his final moments.

_Will, his head thrown back in almost soundless agony, as Davy Jones trusts the sword into his chest_

_Will, his low groans of pain reaching her while shock holds her rooted to her spot; she watches helplessly as the Captain of the Flying Dutchman gives a final malicious twist to the shining blade impaling him, a smile of sadistic glee on his disfigured face._

_Will, his dark eyes filled with confusion and anguish as she stumbles to his side, wordlessly begging her to help him somehow, unable to find the strength to pull the sword free._

_Will, trying so hard to form the words "I love you" as she cradles his ashen face in her palms; she tells him again and again that he is all right, as if her very insistence would make it so._

_Will, his gaze dimming with the beginnings of death, his eyes never leaving her, as if she were his North Star, while Jack helps him stab the heart of Davy Jones._

_Will, his lashes incredibly dark against his too pale cheeks when his eyes fall closed, as if the rain had washed him of all colour. His life is ending, and she can't stop it._

_Will, lying so terribly still, sprawled and broken on the sodden deck, as she screams that she won't leave him and struggles furiously against Jack's insistent pull._

_Will, long since gone from her view as she watches the Flying Dutchman sink beneath the churning waters of the ebbing maelstrom; she turns her head away, unable to bear the sight when she rises above it all, as if she were magically gifted with wings that she never wanted._

She ruthlessly thrusts the images away, for they carry a lifetime of anguish and loss. She pushes them down, pushes all of it down, into a cold, hard place inside of her that came into being at the moment of his death, a place she is fast coming to embrace. If she didn't, she knows that she would be mindless with grief and rage.

Much better, this.

They seem to be waiting for something, Jack and Barbossa and the crew. The battle isn't over, and their chances of survival, much less victory, are infinitely small. Yet they seem to be doing nothing. And she doesn't care.

A movement out of the corner of her eye, an unnatural churning of the now quiet seas, pulls her away from her unseeing contemplation of the horizon. She turns her head to witness the _Flying Dutchman_ explode from the water, coming to rest not far from the _Pearl_.

A little flare of life rises up inside of her at the sight. Will was on that ship when it went down. Maybe she can find a way to get back to it, she thinks. As little true sense as this makes, she needs to be _there_, with him. Not here, never here.

A dark figure stands at the helm, and she wonders for a moment whom it might be, knowing only that it can't be Davy Jones. As she watches, he turns to grasp the ship's wheel and his defiant cry splits the air.

"Ready on the guns!"

An incredulous smile blossoms over Elizabeth Turner's features, her eyes sting with sudden tears as her world reels almost drunkenly around her.

He is alive! Somehow, some way, Will is blessedly, wonderously alive. She doesn't know how her heart can contain her joy as the ice, that has been slowly encasing her very soul since that terrible moment when Davy Jones thrust his blade into her husband's chest, shatters into a thousand shards at the utterly miraculous sound of his voice.


End file.
